O’Malley answers. “One hundred and sixty-eight.”
The number frightens me. Once upon a time, I led five people. If those coffins open—if the people inside are like us—I could be responsible for almost three hundred.
“That would more than double our numbers,” Gaston says. “Our food will be gone in half the time.”
Spingate frowns. “The Grownups sure seem to like multiples of three. Or maybe twelve. Were any of the coffins cracked open, like back on the Xolotl?”
O’Malley shakes his head. “I didn’t see any damage. They all looked sealed.”
“Leave them that way,” Bishop says. “At least until we find more food. Whoever it is, if they’re in the coffins they aren’t eating anything. And they aren’t a threat.”
O’Malley picks at the scab on his cheek.
“What if the shuttle decides to wake them up?” he says. “Or what if someone up on the Xolotl can do it somehow? Gaston, you’ve been talking to the shuttle. Ask it about the coffins.”
Gaston sighs. “Shuttle, what do you know about the coffins on Deck Four?”
The honey-sweet voice answers from the walls.
“I have no information on Deck Four, Captain Xander. My knowledge of that part of the ship has been erased.”
“I figured,” Gaston says. “This has been erased, that has been erased—if I ask about anything other than flying, the shuttle doesn’t know anything. It doesn’t even know why it picked this place to land.”
Like us, the shuttle has blank areas.
There are instant questions of who erased its memories, and why, but those things aren’t important right now.
“We have to find food,” I say. “We’ll eat up what we have very quickly. Finding food is our first objective.”
Bishop shakes his head. “First we need to understand our immediate surroundings. Find places from where we could be attacked, and ways to escape if we are. We need to reconnoiter the area, Em.”
He says that big word the way Spingate said microorganisms.
Gaston’s sleepy face brightens. “I can help with that. The shuttle has powerful sensors for flying. I bet it can make us a map.”
He whispers something. He tilts his head, listening, and I see a black jewel in his ear, just like Spingate’s. He raises his hands. Light bathes his skin, making him glow like a god.
The images on the walls around us suddenly flow toward the middle of the pilothouse, shrinking rapidly as they go, the contracting vine ring at the center. In a blur of motion, the entire ruined city seems half the size, a quarter, a tenth, a hundredth. Buildings rush in, transforming from immense blocks of stone to tiny toys lined by tiny streets.
The pilothouse walls are once again black. The city that spread out in all directions is now a circle hovering at waist level. Bishop, Aramovsky, Gaston, Spingate, O’Malley and I stand at the map’s edge.
A glowing compass rose points out north, south, east and west. The center of the rose is a circle with the same Mictlan symbol that decorated our ties.
Streets and avenues are laid out in a grid. The two widest streets are perpendicular. Where they would cross each other, they vanish beneath the city’s largest building—that towering pyramid I saw when I was standing atop the vine ring.
To the northeast, a river flows into the city, so real I see the water sparkling, moving. The river ends at a tiny waterfall that drops into a wide pool.
I notice something about the vine-covered pyramids: they are flat squares stacked one on top of another, each smaller than the layer below. They look like the ones that were carved into my birth-coffin.
“Ziggurats,” I say. The word just pops out; I’ve remembered something from Matilda’s past. The others look at the stepped pyramids, at each other, and nod. They now remember that word, too.
Spingate points to a glowing dot at the map’s center. “That’s our shuttle.”
It seems so small, further emphasizing the vastness of the ruined city.
Gaston gestures to the map’s circular edge. “That’s as far as the shuttle can see.”
Even though it’s fairly small on the map, the tallest ziggurat—the one on top of the two intersecting roads—is detailed enough for me to make out a pillar at the very top, where the yellow vines don’t grow. Six black symbols run down its length: empty circle, circle-star, double-ring, circle-cross, half-circle and, at the bottom, the tooth-circle or “gear.”
About two-thirds of the way up that ziggurat, on a corner, a vine-covered statue of a person faces up toward the peak. I can’t tell if it is a man or a woman. The statue must be huge.
This building seems important.
“Gaston,” I say, “how long would it take us to reach that tall ziggurat?”
He leans toward it, thinks. “If you walk fast, the better part of a day, most likely.”
O’Malley reaches out to touch the buildings near his waist, as if they are tiny things he might pick up. His hand goes right through them, kicking up a small cloud of sparkles.